Signed,

Epstein’s Mother

“You’re not allowed to sit down in Heaven? What’s up with that?”

Oh, won’t you sit down?
Lord, I can’t sit down.
Oh, won’t you sit down?
Lord, I can’t sit down.
Oh, won’t you sit down?
Lord, I can’t sit down–
Cause I just got to Heaven, gotta look around.

Was going to link to a performance of this, but all that Youtube has is middle-school renditions that are too painfully white-bread for my ethnic tradition to take. (7/8 Northern European plus one Spaniard in the works; high school in the 1950s in a school which when I arrived had one Filipino in the student body and later acquired one actual Negro! And learned the song in a summer day camp, similar racial constitution, but the counselors had at some point heard Spirituals sung.)

(That’s musically white-bread, not racially, which makes it all the worse. Wish I could send them all back to the huge music festivals I attended back then, to sing in the enormous unwieldy chorus directed by Jester Hairston, surely the first Black person from whom most of them (us) had ever taken direction, and unanimously adored by the kids, who learned at least someting about singing that sort of music, and, of course, ate it up.)

(BTW the Hairston family was one of the biggest land-owners and slave-owners (but I repeat myself) in South Carolina. Apparently there are now huge Hairston reunions, happy biracial affairs that surely would have made the antebellum Hairstons quite sick. This actually can inspire me to momentary positive thoughts about South Carolina.)

(Note to fellow codgers: Did you sing “Hell, no” back in The Days, to the tune of A-men, arranged and popularized by Jester Hairston?)

“… the Talmud states, it was proved to Elisha that Metatron could not be a second deity by the fact that Metatron received 60 ’strokes with fiery rods’ to demonstrate that Metatron was not a god, but an angel, and could be punished.”

O children of the Lord, inquire not into the hobbies of angels. What the Host does in its spare time is none of thine business and between consenting Seraphim.

You’re not allowed to sit down in Heaven? What’s up with that?

Is this a common belief, and is that why R.L. Burnside called one of his albums “Wish I Was In Heaven Sitting Down”?

“We shouldn’t waste time contemplating laughably untrue mythological notions, instead of the mainstream story history of Jesus.”

Damn, this “shorter” stuff is hard— it took a surprising amount of effort to get it down to a single line.

“… the Talmud states, it was proved to Elisha that Metatron could not be a second deity by the fact that Metatron received 60 ‘strokes with fiery rods’ to demonstrate that Metatron was not a god, but an angel, and could be punished.” -[3

Next week, I’m writing a column on the Immaculate Conception, which most people incorrectly think refers to the virgin birth of Jesus but which instead refers to the virgin birth of the Virgin Mary.

Everyone makes this error; it makes me lose my patience.

– Sister Mary Ignatius

You little buggers get off my lawn.

Comparing the Da Vinci Code to biblical fact/history is like comparing Star Wars to Dungeons and Dragons.

This is the essence of religiosity. I find myself nodding sagely and intoning “Hmmm, yeah”.

Mebbes it’s because I’ve not even had my first cup of tea yet (I dinnae drink coffee – I’d probably spontaneously combust).